Drawing Four 8-2001 by Gary Cummiskey

Durban Fishermen

Eva Jackson: 0004

Darling, homerun
Darling, homerun.

Ana Drahotusky Bruketa: 0022

Victoria Williams: 0157

There was a girl who went to the city. She came to be happy, or anyway she thought so, but wasn’t really sure. She just knew that other areas of her life had begun to deteriorate which was interesting. But anyway the city was kind of damp, brown and grey. Everywhere there was grass it had been trodden down into mud, and she understood this. She felt at home underfoot and thus protected the library mice when she found them and helped them to evade capture. She too feared the pest control; the health department. “I just want to live but I am making others unhealthy?”

Beards: 0032

Beached Whale by Gary Cummiskey

Eva Jackson: 0003

The two rabbits

The two rabbits came into their house like frights into a mind. They ran from corner to corner without any stops in between. The garden waiting for them was steep, terraced at the back, heading up to Eunice’s room and the shaken heads of weed. As the soil came up on the roots of grass and the beds got cleared and ready, the rabbits skulked indoors to be let loose later as fertilising agents. There was no hock and they scrabbled around in the bath, with Bimal cooing and chattering at them. Their dirt collected around the plughole and they stamped it on their back feet. Satan died of eating a chicken bone, and Mr Flopsy played hesitant games with the cats until they found him with his fur lying down. They skinned him and ate him. They studied Kafka and mind over bunny.

Ana Drahotusky Bruketa: 0021

Victoria Williams: 0156

He had the tell-tale whiff of Febreeze about him...

Beards: 0031

Drawing Three 7-2001 by Gary Cummiskey

Eva Jackson: 0002

We sat there stunned by the sun on the beach, black jacket covered in sand, the surface of the sand with a little salt crust. He spoke about Dianetics, and about how the cells of your body remember what trauma you have been through, so that when you are going about your business they activate, and churn yourself into an action you didn’t plan, or consciously direct. Then you can go through the whole day doing things and not knowing why. I prided myself on the selectivity with which I greeted this, and enjoyed the honesty of dismissing Dianetics too. It’s nothing new, I revelled in saying, most of the reasons we come up with for why we do things are crap. Some people have the hemispheres of their brains separated, unlike the rest of us, and when a message is flashed to one hemisphere by flashing it to the connecting eye, instructing the subject to knock over a glass on the table, the other hemisphere is asked the question “why”. It answers with alacrity that there was a spider on the glass. I gave him this slightly mangled account of an experiment. He looked at me and with all his conviction in his own reasons for doing things, narrowed his eyes and listened.

Ana Drahotusky Bruketa: 0020

Victoria Williams: 0155

I would, but I don’t want to listen you gushing, both figuratively and literally.

Beards: 0030

Drawing Two 1-2002 by Gary Cummiskey

Eva Jackson: 0001

Pressure

She thinks that there is something wrong in the city
The flats back onto a mortuary, pressure in the air.
Last week she backed away, hands up, just before the accident
That flattened the robot. She borrows my dress without asking
And walks off as the gate opens and her eyes shine dull bright, dull, bright.

Ana Drahotusky Bruketa: 0019

Victoria Williams: 0154

I could have written so many poems if you hadn’t left the pen on the other side of the room.

Kelwyn Sole: Dreaming The Everyday

Kelwyn Sole: Dreaming the everyday. Gary Cummiskey interviews Kelwyn Sole at The Dye Hard Interviews.

Your Sex Drive by Gary Cummiskey